Tuesday 6 June 2000 06.44 EDT
First published on Tuesday 6 June 2000 06.44 EDT

"Today I have come to Archbishop Tenison's School, to see for myself what good teaching and excellent school leadership can do to bring excellence in education to pupils in one of the more deprived areas of our capital.

"Archbishop Tenison's was for many years a monument to the absolute failure of a liberal establishment and its dogmatic ideas. A former grammar school and centre of excellence, it was forced to become a comprehensive under Harold Wilson's government. Its sixth form then withered away and, under the rule of the loony left in Lambeth, it became what some people would have described as an inner city sink school.

"Then, in 1993, under the leadership of headmaster Brian Jones, it opted out of local authority control and became grant-maintained. A couple of years later, it got back its sixth form. Since then it has gone from strength to strength. According to the HM Chief Inspector of Schools, it is one of the 29 most improved schools in the country. It is heavily over-subscribed, has earned much confidence within the local community and even has three ex-pupils playing in the Premier League. Last year, twenty four of its pupils gained places at university including one pupil who won a place at Cambridge university.

"Ignorant chancellors of the exchequer who lecture our best universities about elitism should come to inner city comprehensives like this one to find out what a liberal elite did to destroy standards in our schools. And they should learn from schools like Archbishop Tenison's about the dramatic improvements can happen when schools are freed from bureaucratic controls and left wing political interference.

"For the real enemy of good education in Britain is the elitism of a New Labour government increasingly in thrall to the obsessions of the liberal establishment.

"New Labour and its liberal elite have abolished the Assisted Places Scheme that helped children from less well off backgrounds go to some of the best schools in the country because of their ideological hatred of private education.

"New Labour and its liberal elite have scrapped grant maintained schools - the very mechanism that rescued schools like Archbishop Tenison's and hundreds of others from the clutches of politically motivated local education authorities.

"New Labour and its liberal elite have unleashed Labour party activists in a war against our excellent grammar schools, that only the good sense of parents has stopped becoming a national tragedy.

"Now New Labour and its liberal elite are trying to force feed our nation's school children with their politically correct nonsense by seeking to abolish important safeguards like Section 28. And the latest news is that they even want to ban musical chairs because it is unfair to the child without a chair when the music stops.

"For decades we have had to put up with the classroom obsessions of the Labour party and the liberal elite. And we have paid the price in our schools with falling standards, poor discipline and children who can't spell the word 'Oxford' let alone aspire to go there.

"Is it any wonder that the percentage of students at Oxford and Cambridge who went to state schools has dropped considerably since the liberal establishment got hold of our education policy in the 1960s?

"The last Conservative government succeeded in turning the liberal tide with grant maintained schools, city technology colleges and the national curriculum. But we did not go far enough, and we were hampered in our efforts by left-wing local education authorities.

"The next Conservative government will not just turn the tide - we will defeat the liberal elite that has brought our education system to its knees.

"In the next few weeks, I will be setting out our education policy in a whole range of areas. Today I want to start by telling you about how my party is going make discipline in our schools a key plank of our education policy for the next general election.

"I want to tell you about how we are going to give teachers the backing they deserve, and head-teachers the freedom they need, to deal with unruly pupils.

"I want to tell you about how the next Conservative government is going to put the right of the many to a decent and ordered education before the rights of the disruptive and violent few.

"Sadly, that is not the case today. For this government has put the interests of the small minority of children with behaviour problems first, and the interests of the great majority of teachers and parents and well-behaved pupils a distant second.

"David Blunkett has set schools the completely arbitrary and unacceptable target of cutting the number of expulsions or - to use the current jargon - the number of permanent exclusions by a third over the next two years. And to make sure his targets are met, the education secretary is fining schools up to £6,000 for every disruptive pupil beyond the targets set by civil servants in Whitehall.

"In short, four thousand more young thugs, are going to be allowed to hold our classrooms to ransom just to satisfy the politically correct targets of this Labour government.

"To education ministers who will no doubt say that this is not a very important issue in our schools, I say:

"Listen to the story of two London secondary schools which last month were forced to re-admit pupils they had permanently excluded for wielding knives and conducting gang-like vendettas. 'Now', say the headteachers, 'all the other pupils are desperately frightened' and the education of hundreds of children has been jeopardised for the sake of a tiny minority.

"Or listen to the story of Angeles Walford, a head-teacher seconded to a failing school, who said recently: 'I excluded a boy who hit a teacher but was forced to give him a second chance. He came back and hit another teacher'.

"Or listen to David Hart of the National Association of Head Teachers who spoke for all teachers when he said last week 'the fact is that in order to meet the government's target, more and more intolerable behaviour will have to be tolerated in schools... It seems to me that the interests of the violent, drug dealing and bullying few are increasingly given precedence over the interests of the quiet, law-abiding many'.

"The latest government gimmick that is supposed to be an answer these problems is the 'sin bin'. Like most education initiatives from New Labour, they obviously spent more time thinking up the name than in devising the policy. For David Blunkett's idea is that difficult pupils will be put in special classes within the very schools where they are being disruptive. As anyone with any experience of working in a school could have told him, all that is going to happen is that the problem is moved from the classroom to the playground and classroom corridor.

"I agree with Nigel de Gruchy who attacked what he called the government's 'softly softly approach' by pointing out that 'we are trying to get the message across to youngsters that violent and disruptive behaviour is totally unacceptable anywhere near schools, and that they must go elsewhere. That message is not achieved when "elsewhere" is just across the corridor or down the playground'.

"David Blunkett's policy on school discipline is a slap in the face to every teacher and parent in the country who want government to be on their side; it is a blow to law-abiding people across the country who hope and expect that schools teach children in our society about respect for authority and for the law; and it is a denial of the basic right of every school child to get the best education possible in a classroom environment where they are both free to learn and free from intimidation.

"Where this Labour government has failed, the next Conservative government will succeed. We offer a common sense approach that puts the rights of the many ahead of the problems of the few. This is what we will do:

"One, we will abolish Labour's artificial targets for school exclusions that are tying the hands of teachers, and forcing schools to keep disruptive or violent pupils.

"Two, we will abolish the absurd financial penalties that are used by the government to bully schools into meeting those targets. Schools will no longer face the stiff fines for excluding pupils. Good school discipline will no longer mean a heavy blow to school budgets.

"Three, we will give head-teachers and school governors the complete freedom, within the law, to set the standards and rules of discipline in their classrooms. That is what our Free Schools policy is all about - trusting teachers instead of issuing diktats from Whitehall.

"Four, we will help pupils with behavioural problems. There is absolutely no point excluding disruptive children from schools if you are unable to provide them with support. Or else, as we all know to our cost, today's child terrorising a class room becomes tomorrow's youth criminal terrorising a whole community.

"So we will draw on the pioneering work of the Zacchaeus Centre in Birmingham that has achieved remarkable results with difficult and disruptive children. We will establish a network of centres - what we shall call Progress Centres - that will provide everything from a one week's special teaching for a child at risk of being excluded to full-time education for those pupils who are permanently excluded.

"These Progress Centres could be financed either by schools buying a course for a disruptive pupil; or, in the case of permanent exclusions, the Centre being paid the funds that would otherwise have gone to the school. We will also abolish the government's ineffective and gimmicky on site school 'sin bins' and use part of the money saved to help fund the work of the Progress Centres.

"Abolishing the government's school exclusion targets and penalties. Giving schools the freedom to set their own standards of discipline. Helping excluded pupils and schools alike by replacing the gimmick of sin bins with Progress Centres. "With common sense on school discipline we will give teachers the backing they deserve and children the ordered education that should be theirs by right.

"With common sense on school discipline we will start winning the battle in our classrooms against New Labour and its liberal elite.

"Today, the Conservative party is broadening its agenda and speaking up for the mainstream majority of the British people not just on tax and Europe and crime, but on pensions and now education too. We are coming forward with new ideas and challenging old orthodoxies.

"The contrast with the Labour government is clear. They are running out of ideas and running out of steam. Tomorrow we are told that Tony Blair is going to give another speech that tries to tell us all where his government is going. In other words, it is another relaunch from a prime minister who has had more relaunches than Cape Canaveral.

"It is time Tony Blair stopped trying to persuade parents and patients and pensioners that problems don't exist and start coming forward with answers to the problems that everyone sees in their local hospitals, schools and streets.

"After more than three years in office, people want to see more from Mr Blair than just yet another Downing Street summit and a new set of gimmicks. When is he actually going to deliver on all his promises?

"No doubt he will tomorrow reel out new telephone numbers that he claims to be spending on public services. So why is that people are waiting longer than ever for NHS treatment? "Why is that that class sizes are getting bigger and discipline is being undermined in almost all secondary schools? Why is it that crime is soaring while police numbers are tumbling?

"Tony Blair is wasting our money, and soon many will conclude that he is wasting our time too."